


With the Sun on Our Backs

by Eristastic



Category: End Roll (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Day At The Beach, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-24
Updated: 2017-08-24
Packaged: 2018-12-19 11:31:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11896860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eristastic/pseuds/Eristastic
Summary: Things have been busy, so it's time for everyone to just calm down, go to the beach, and have some fun.Except that this is End Roll, so it doesn't quite work out like that.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was written vaguely in honour of the anniversary of the game's translation (thank you vgperson), but I finished it early and I'm impatience incarnate, so here we are.
> 
> I tagged it as Gen, because it's not really a shipfic, but Tabasa/Kantera and Yumi/Mireille are in here.

No one was quite sure how it got decided, in the end. It felt like one of those group decisions that everyone simply arrived at simultaneously, like giving the communal courgette patch up for good when the slugs got to it. Or, to take a more delicate example, mutually deciding to ignore the suspicious amount of time any Tabasa- or Mireille-shaped individuals might have been spending at Kantera and Yumi’s houses, respectively (sometimes overnight, and — as Gardenia had so helpfully shown Russell through her binoculars — sometimes returning quite dishevelled in the mornings). It was just the way things happened, sometimes. When you lived in a village barely big enough to earn the name, you grew close, and while sometimes that meant you learnt to give each other privacy (unless you were Gardenia), sometimes it also meant you understood each other. It was the latter part that came into play this time. That being the case, it only took a few gentle prompts to get everyone in swimwear and on the beach to spend a late summer afternoon together.

On the other hand, Russell reflected, that theory might have been completely wrong. Now he thought about it, the whole business smelt suspiciously like one of Dogma’s ideas to get them to do something social and wholesome (“I am not wholesome,” Kantera had said icily the last time Dogma had tried it, “I never have been, I daresay I never will be, and the idea frankly revolts me,” and that had been the end of that). At least, Dogma looked very cheerful about the whole thing, striding over the dunes in a swimsuit that was about as modest as it could be while still leaving his chest bare. Cody strode after him, taking a few shots at the backs of his knees with the sunshade she was carrying until Mireille came over to stop her and they began to have a difference of opinions on what ‘being nice’ was.

“You doing okay?”

Russell looked up at Tabasa, who had — in his Tabasa way — come to stand with one hand idly resting on Russell’s head, as if he wasn’t sure whether to ruffle the hair or use him as an armrest. Russell shrugged, taking care to move his head as little as possible in case it was the latter.

“You’re looking healthier than you did when you first arrived,” Tabasa said, leading them through the rough dune grass. “You were so peaky back then, but you’re actually getting some colour to you. You’ll be putting on muscle in no time.”

Russell looked at him blandly, wondering what one could reply to that, when he was clapped on the back so hard he would have fallen over, had the back-clapper not foreseen this and caught him by the back of his t-shirt. Putting him back on his feet, Yumi pinched his cheek (but gently), and said, “Hadn’t noticed myself, but now you’ve pointed it out, our little guy _is_ looking better.” She grinned at him and looked up at Tabasa. “On the other hand, you, mister, are getting grey hairs.”

“I’m what?!” He started patting his fringe — the only part of his hair available, what with his hood — and pulling strands out so he could see them. He stumbled into two separate patches of grass before he said, “Where? I can’t see any.”

“Well, you’re not looking in the right place, are ya? Here, let me just…” She leaned over to find the offending grey hair, which had the unfortunate side-effect of squishing Russell between them. He tried to extricate his cheek from the sharp embrace of Tabasa’s zip, but before he managed it, Kantera’s glacier-cold voice cut in.

“Do try not to suffocate the boy now we’ve managed to get him out with us, won’t you? Consider it a personal favour to me.”

Tabasa whirled around. “Huh? Oh…Sorry, Russell, didn’t mean to squish you there. Try to take shallow breaths for a bit, okay?”

While he did this (more to please Tabasa than anything else), Yumi looked Kantera up and down. The four of them had stopped on the ridge of the dune. Below them, Gardenia and the siblings frolicked (Mireille joined them after making sure Saxon was comfortable in a deck chair with a nice book), and beyond even that, the sea was sparkling. It was a cloudless day, the kind that needed a surplus of sunshades, or — in Kantera’s case — a very wide hat.

“You’re looking snazzy,” Yumi said after a moment.

Kantera gave her a look above the top of his sunglasses. “Thank you. You needn’t stare.”

“’S a bit difficult not to, not meaning to criticise.”

“Some of us have delicate skin,” Kantera said mildly, adjusting his shell-embroidered, floor-length robe.

“Speaking of that,” Tabasa said, “your skin’s a bit shiny. How many layers of sun cream do you have on?”

“Two. I may yet manage a third layer: we shall have to see.”

Tabasa clapped his hands as best he could with a heavy bag on one arm. “Right, well, I’m pretty sure that can’t be good for you, so…”

If he offered any more persuasive arguments, Russell didn’t hear them, because Yumi had taken his hand, winked, held her hat in place, and begun to run down the dunes to the beach with him in tow. His sandals let silky dry sand in and out freely, stinging the backs of his bare calves with each stride — just too wide for his legs, because Yumi wasn’t curbing her pace for him. When they skidded to a stop on the beach, she grinned and wandered off to see how Gardenia was getting on with blowing up an inflatable volleyball. Mireille, like a very nervous predator noticing an opening, came up to Russell as he was putting his bag down.

“He—…” She coughed to clear her throat. “Hello, Russell! I think they’ll be, um, rather a long time here, just setting everything up, so do you…would you like to come for a walk? It’s fine if you don’t want to, of course! It’s just, I read about this…this type of shortbread, and you see, you make it by pressing it into shells so that it holds that shape? And you cook it like that, and I thought that might be…might be nice to try, so…” Wringing her hands cheerfully, she smiled at him in expectation.

“That sounds fun.”

“Doesn’t it?” Gaining steam now the idea had been approved, she added, “And I thought…I thought we might get away from this…noise…”

Mireille curled a strand of hair in her fingers frantically, apparently caught between not wanting to cause offence and not knowing how to describe the — for lack of a better word — music. She might as well not have bothered: the noise was offensive enough in itself. Russell had the idea that Gardenia had chosen it specifically for that reason, since she was now crouched in front of the speakers and was waving a sturdy-looking beach spade at anyone who came close. As the track reached what was, presumably, an exuberant and dissonant kind of chorus, Mireille’s fingers fidgeted faster. She and Russell watched, in that silence so particular to spectators, as Yumi managed to commandeer the speakers while Cody distracted Gardenia with a fistful of sand. Ignoring the indignant squawk that followed, Yumi changed the song. For a moment, all was peaceful, and then everyone simultaneously remembered that Yumi only ever listened to country music, and the fight began again.

“Perhaps we should go,” Mireille said quietly. At Russell’s nod of agreement, she took his hand, and — with one last look over her shoulder to make sure Saxon was comfortably settled into his chair — they began to walk down the beach. They didn’t get very far before Cody called out after them, and they turned to see her dragging her brother over.

“You’re going for a walk, right?” she asked, panting lightly. Dogma looked distinctly put out, but wasn’t saying anything yet, as if waiting for the right moment. “We’d like to come with!”

“We would not.” Dogma chose his moment, but it evidently wasn’t perfect, because Cody talked over him: “This idiot and Yumi started spatting over what music was right and I thought we ought to get out of there until they’re all set up. You don’t mind, right?”

“Oh, _I_ don’t…” Mireille looked over at Russell, who shook his head too, and the four of them set off.

Once they were a decent distance away from the main camp, Cody got on the balls of her feet and stretched extravagantly. They were far enough out that the rhythmic swishing of the water and the equally rhythmic sounds of their steps disturbing the sand drowned out any conversation from the others. Russell was enjoying a sprightly little breeze that twisted here and there, cooling the sweat on his back. It was just too hot for him, not that the others seemed to have any problem with it.

“So what are you walking along here for?” Cody, not naturally inclined to silence, asked. “Just strolling?”

Mireille explained what she was looking for.

“Cooking biscuits in shells?” Dogma sniffed. “I’ve no doubt in my mind that you — or Gardenia, at any rate — would be able to make it work, but don’t you think it’s a little…wrong? Uncouth? Messy?”

“I think you wash the sand off first,” Cody said helpfully.

“Well yes, I got _that_ ,” he snapped back. “I meant, wouldn’t the shells explode in the oven?”

“We, um, hope not. It’s quite well…well-documented, so…” Mireille bent down to pick up a flat, ridged shell and turned it over in her hand. In a quiet voice, she finished, “I think it should work…”

As she and Russell began to pick up the shells that were now, conveniently, beginning to show up along the shore, Dogma fiddled with his hat (why he’d worn it the beach was anyone’s guess). “Well, far be it from me to presume I know more about cooking than you.”

“Then why did you say anything in the first place?” Cody groused while Mireille tried to say something soothing. “I mean, _really_ Dogma. Think before you speak, what the hell.”

“Language, Cody,” Dogma warned.

While Mireille and Russell collected shells and pretended not to notice the argument, Cody shot him a look, and went to take some seawater in her cupped hands. Slowly, she pretended to taste it. “Ahh,” she sighed. “Salty, just like you.”

“Was that worth it?” Dogma asked dryly as she began to laugh at her own joke.

“Yeah, kind of. Alright, enough fooling around: let’s get these shells found!”

With the four of them at it, it didn’t take long before they’d found enough of the right shells to fill up Mireille’s apron (because, as she admitted apologetically, she’d forgotten to bring a bag). After that — since Cody said it was too nice of a day to waste by going straight back to camp — they looked around the other shells strewn across the beach. It was like in a storybook: Russell was sure normal beaches couldn’t have this many. While the others were looking through pearly conches, he picked up a small, pink-tinted spiral shell, considered it, and pocketed it. Cody began to chase Dogma with a hermit crab she’d found, and despite Mireille’s pleas to calm down, they ended up both falling in the water, to the great distress of one and delight of the other.

“I didn’t _mean_ for that to happen,” she explained happily afterwards, as she pulled her brother out. “You’re just too much fun to tease. Oh, don’t look at me like that!”

Dogma shook her hand off his arm and stalked up the beach. “I am not looking at anyone,” he — dripping — said. “I am wallowing in misery as I contemplate the futility of goodness in this world while little sisters still exist.”

“Please don’t,” Mireille protested eloquently, but it seemed to be enough. Shamed by the concern of others, the siblings quietened down and suggested they should head back. Russell was glad of it: the sun was climbing in the sky and he felt strangely light-headed, like the sweat dripping down the sides of his face was draining him. Trying to ignore it, he trotted beside Mireille and helped her carry the mass of shells that clattered with every step.

“Um,” she said after not very much time at all. “I don’t suppose you’ll be, um, doing hearings any time soon, would you?”

Cody obligingly walked to the other side of her brother so he could talk more easily with Mireille. “You’re feeling the need to confess _again_?” he asked, not quite hiding the incredulity. “I can certainly do one for you, but — and sorry for saying so — you never seem to have anything serious to confess. If you’d just like to talk, you can always come and see me as a friend, you know.”

“Th-that’s terribly kind of you!” Mireille stuttered, the shells clashing in her arms. “But I couldn’t possibly take up your time like that!”

Dogma waited for her to give a reason, and when none was offered, said, “Well, if that’s the way you want it, we can sort something out. Oh, but on the subject, and now I’ve got you here,” —he peered over at Russell— “I’ve been meaning to say, but you know you’re welcome to come round to the church whenever you like, don’t you?”

“Yeah!” Cody put in excitedly. “I know you’re busy and all, but if you ever feel like a bit of peace and quiet — not that you really need it — you should come round to ours!”

Dogma nodded approvingly. “Sometimes it’s heartening to be quiet _with_ people. If you ever feel you’d like that, or you’d actually like to pray, you’re welcome anytime. We just wanted to make sure you knew that, since things have been so rushed since you came here. Mi casa es su casa and all that.” He, apparently forgetting his misery at being wet, smiled.

The breeze from earlier seemed to have disappeared. The air was heavy and still (strange, when Russell could see Mireille’s hair waving gently) and he was finding it difficult to think. It was as if his head was compressing, his heartbeat growing too loud for his veins. The siblings were expecting some kind of response, but what was there to say? What was he supposed to do? His pulse was speeding up, his chest clenching: he couldn’t have found words even if he’d felt in any fit state to say them. Everything was just too hot, too dizzying.

“Oh, goodness,” Mireille said, breaking up the silence in a nervous way. “I, um…Cody, Dogma, could you take all of…of these over to the bags? Sorry to ask this of you!”

They seemed a little puzzled, but took the parcel of shells and left, trudging back through the sand to camp. They were close now: Russell could see it when Yumi spotted them and started to laugh at how drenched Dogma still looked.

“S-sorry,” Mireille said, and he turned back at her. They stopped walking. “You, um, you looked a little lost for words, and I thought you might like an escape…” She began to fidget with her hair again, looking away.

“Thanks.” Russell thought for a moment. He could still feel the sweat drying on his skin, still feel the flush of heat from earlier fading; he fished out the spiral shell he’d picked up and held it out to Mireille. “Here, if you want it. The colour reminded me of you.”

In the distance, there was a brief cry about bad music taste or something similar — Russell didn’t really pay attention, because he was watching Mireille. She stared at the shell, and blinked several times. After the fourth, her face melted into pure joy and she beamed.

“Oh, Russell, this is lovely!” Hesitantly, she reached out to take the spiral shell from him like it was a nugget of gold. If possible, her smile grew wider, and she patted his cheek affectionately. “Oh, I’m s-so pleased! You’re such a good boy, thank you!”

Russell nodded. She left to show Saxon the shell, and he rubbed his cheek where she’d touched it. His skin still felt oddly warm. It was like he was overheating.

Sedately, he walked over to the others. Kantera had deposited himself on the second deck chair with a book, next to the sleeping Saxon and the speakers, which were playing gentle string music. Yumi looked personally victimised by it. She’d greeted Mireille back with a hug, but now — apparently itching for something to do — she slammed the volleyball into Dogma’s chest and declared, “Don’t go thinking I’ll take those comments about my music lightly! Get ready to get your ass kicked!”

“I can’t play!” Dogma — still dripping — protested.

“You’re Cody’s big bro: how come you can’t play?”

“Volleyball isn’t genetic! And look, can’t you stop for a second? It isn’t at all comforting having you walk closer and closer like that.” He managed to back into Gardenia, who yelped and almost dropped the section of barbecue she was holding.

“Well, look,” Yumi said, her hand on one hip. “ _Someone_ _’s_ gotta play volleyball with me now. Don’t care if it’s you or your sister, but I just got the net up, so we’re doing it.”

“Are we playing volleyball?” Gardenia asked, handing the bag of coals to a perplexed Tabasa. “I want in!”

“Thatta girl!” Yumi high-fived her and turned back to face the sea and Cody, who was paddling. “Cody, you in?”

“I guess,” Cody called back. “What are we doing?”

“Volleyball,” Yumi replied, throwing the ball at her. “But we still need a fourth… Hey, Mireille!”

Mireille, fussing over the angle of Saxon’s sunshade, looked up with the air of a frightened meerkat. “Y-yes?”

“You’re playing volleyball with us.”

“I’m _what_? No, I…I couldn’t possibly…!”

It took roughly two minutes to convince her. Russell counted, since he’d neglected to wear a watch. Once Mireille had been press-ganged  into the game, it was decided she would play with Gardenia in a doubles match against Cody and Yumi, whatever that meant. While they got into position, got rid of shoes, and tied up their hair if long enough to merit it, Russell wandered over to sit in the sand with Dogma and Tabasa, who’d evidently decided to watch. Kantera was still engrossed in his book.

“I’m glad we got Gardenia off DJ duty,” Tabasa said mildly, hugging his knees to his chest. He was still wearing his hoodie and didn’t seem inclined to take it off, despite the dizzying heat.

Dogma nodded. “I much prefer this. This particular song is definitely a ‘banger’,” he said, the quotes all but audible in his voice.

After a noticeable pause, Tabasa said, “….yeah. Yeah, it is, Dogma.”

The volleyball match began, without much ceremony. Russell had never played it, to the best of his knowledge: he imagined he might have seen a game here or there, but there had never been anyone to play with, of course. Watching the girls play, he thought that that wasn’t such a bad thing. The aim seemed to be to jump higher than the others, or — in Gardenia’s case, since she had a noticeable disadvantage in height — to hit the ball at your opponents hard enough to do an injury. If there were any rules (for example, ‘don’t hit anyone’), they were forgotten in the first five minutes. Tabasa tried to call out the points, but even he realised it was a lost cause when all four of them started double-touching shamelessly amongst too many taunts to hear properly. When they apparently decided collectively that points could be earned by hitting various parts of their opponent’s bodies, Tabasa pulled Russell away and suggested they try making a sandcastle.

“I really don’t think that’s how you play,” he said after a few minutes of building. They’d given up on a castle and were trying something more like a sand-bungalow.

“Probably not.”

“I never got into that sort of thing…I like playing games fine, when it’s with the animals, but sports just aren’t for me, I think. Too strict.”

Russell nodded, smoothing a wall down. “I’m not sure what they’re doing is strict.”

“Well, no…I guess not. But I mean, usually. Organised sports aren’t my thing. Neither is this, but…” He waved a hand at the match as Mireille yelled a death threat, its intended recipient unknown. “I think this is just the nice weather getting to them. It’s been kind of an exciting week, hasn’t it? It’s nice to get to relax like this.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it’s nice.”

Dogma began to plead with the others for peace, and was ignored.

“You’re having fun, right?” Tabasa sat up, brushing sand off his hands so he could roll his sleeves up. “I know things have been busy for you, and we didn’t want to rush you or anything, but…”

“No. I like it.”

Amidst more pleas from Dogma, Tabasa smiled. Softly at first, and then he grinned, bending down to work on the sand-bungalow again. “Good. Good! I’d hate to think we’d dragged you into this, you know… It’s so hard to tell what you actually enjoy doing— oh, but that’s fine, don’t worry about it! You’re just being you. But we just want to make sure we’re not forcing you into stuff you don’t want to do, yeah?”

Russell looked at his sand-speckled knees, his hands frozen. “…Yeah.”

“Well, that’s the most important thing! We just want to spend time with you, honestly.” He laughed, apparently totally genuine. “You’re a bit quiet, but you’re a fun kid, you know? I really do like you.”

Sweat trickled down Russell’s neck. He hated feeling too hot, and longed for the inviting shadows under the sunshades.

Tabasa laughed again, but embarrassed this time. “Yikes, sorry if that put you on the spot. I just say things without thinking sometimes. But I guess I really do think of you like a little bro—”

He cut himself off with a shout, ducking. Russell followed suit instinctively, so he heard, rather than saw, the ball connect with Dogma’s nose just as he was yelling at the girls to calm down.

There was the sound of someone falling to the ground, and a moment of silence. Then, “Oh shit, sorry.”

There was a lot of fuss after that. Russell stayed well out of it, carving a roof onto the sand-bungalow with his fingers, but Tabasa went to hover over Dogma and his enthusiastically bleeding nose, until he was shooed away so Cody and Kantera could help the invalid.

“I can’t believe an inflatable ball gave him a nosebleed,” Gardenia said, tossing said inflatable ball up and down. “It’s a good thing you brought healing supplies.”

“I _have_ been to group gatherings with all of you before, I’ll have you remember,” Kantera pointed out while Cody mopped up the blood. “This turn of events does not surprise me in the least.”

“You might have warned me then,” Dogma said in as peeved a voice as he could get out through wads of tissue.

After that, the game continued, but less viciously. Now that incapacitating your opponents was no longer a viable strategy, Gardenia was put at a significant disadvantage, and after Mireille’s bloodlust had died down, they lost without much of a fight. That was what Russell gathered, at any rate. He had shuffled around the bungalow so he could watch, not that he paid much attention. He was enjoying himself, but he felt light-headed. When Mireille started handing around drinks, it occurred to him that it might be dehydration, and he accepted a glass of lemonade.

After the game was over, there was a period of quiet, until Kantera got up.

“I think,” he announced, “I might partake in the sea’s charms.”

“Don’t call them ‘charms’,” Tabasa protested weakly. The rest of the congregation was either too tired out (the girls), asleep (Saxon), or occupied with his mortal wounds (Dogma) to care, and they waved absently to show that they’d heard and had no real objection to the idea.

“Are you going to take the floatie?” Gardenia asked, looking up from her magazine. “Only, it could do with more blowing up, I think.”

Kantera, in the middle of rubbing more sun cream onto his arms, paused. “Does anyone feel inclined to do that for me?”

There was a heavy silence. After a moment, Kantera got back to his sun cream-rubbing with a world-weary sigh, and apparently that was all it took to break Tabasa’s paper-thin resolve, because he said, “Okay, fine, I’ll do it. Where did you put it, Gardenia?”

Rolling onto her front on what had once been the volleyball pitch, she pointed over to a pile of various belongings nearer the dunes, among which rested a dragon floatie. Russell decided the bungalow was bungalow-shaped enough, and rested back on his elbows to watch Tabasa drag the thing out onto the sand. Calling it a dragon was a bit of stretch: it was green, and had a cartoonish dragon head and stubby tail on opposite sides of the ring, but that was about it. Dutifully, Tabasa began to blow it up.

Cody helped her poor, persecuted brother to the now-free deck chair and supplied him with more tissues, and as he was watching that, Russell saw Yumi gesture for him to come over. He was quite happy sitting down, since the sun didn’t seem ready to knock it off any time soon and he still felt woozy, but the lemonade had helped, so he didn’t have any real excuse. As Kantera gracefully sat himself into the floatie with his book and was pushed out into the water, Russell went over to see what Yumi wanted.

The answer turned out to be volleyball. They’d dismantled the net, but she mentioned something about wanting to see him playing like a normal kid, and so she (with Cody’s shouted encouragements) started to teach him how to play. It was a losing battle, in his opinion, but he didn’t tell her that, because she looked so excited to try. Instead, he suffered through her indomitable determination to get him playing a game he was probably biologically indisposed to. He couldn’t get the hang of hitting back the ball properly. Every time he saw it flying at him, his instincts kicked in and he blocked it with a forearm, sending it flying in completely the wrong direction. He managed to hit Gardenia twice and Saxon once (which somehow didn’t wake him up, and they all crowded over him to check he was still breathing). He mumbled apologies over and over, but Yumi didn’t seem to blame him. She kept laughing.

“Well,” she said after he’d managed to hit the ball into the (thankfully unlit) barbecue. “Maybe time to take a break from that, yeah? You’ve got good upper body strength, at least! You’re gonna make a great player one day, bud.” Smiling, she came over to squeeze his shoulder. Meeting his eyes as if to make sure he knew she was grinning for him, she said, “I’m gonna have so much fun teaching you.”

Her palm was like a brand on his already-flushed skin. It was marking him, he felt: burning this encouragement, this whole-hearted belief in his abilities, right into him. It hurt. He’d played badly. He had no talent. She had no reason to say any of what she had. He knew that.

“Hey…” Cody’s voice cut through the heat-haze in his mind and he looked over at her. She was pointing towards the sea. “Is Kantera supposed to be out that far?”

An awful lot of fuss followed. With the help of Gardenia’s binoculars, they realised that Kantera had somehow fallen asleep and was now being washed away. Tabasa, upon hearing the news, went spare. Stripping off his hoodie, he ran into the water and began to swim over to the drifting floatie. Once that had been taken care of, the others calmed down: Mireille worried verbally, but Yumi (snacking) comforted her, Cody joined in with the snacking, and Gardenia jogged up to Russell happily, waving her binoculars. “Want to watch the tearful reunion with me?”

They went up to the edge of the water and began to watch the show. “It’s his own fault, really,” Gardenia said when she’d had a look, handing the binoculars to Russell.

“Why’s that?”

“He said that book was sending him to sleep, so he wanted a change of pace, but then he brought the book with him. On a floatie. Floating in the sea, at the mercy of the waves. Should have seen it coming.”

Russell nodded. Through the binoculars, he could see that Tabasa had just reached the floatie, and was shaking Kantera awake. There followed some frantic explanations they couldn’t hear back on the beach.

“Kantera doesn’t look very concerned, does he?” Gardenia remarked, squinting. “Can I get a look?”

Russell handed the binoculars over to her and shifted his weight so the sand squelched under his feet.  “Have they started kissing yet?” he asked, looking at his hands.

“Not yet. Getting close, though. Come to think of it, I can’t actually see the book: I think he might have dropped i— oh, there they go.” She put the binoculars down and looked away, putting a hand to the side of her face as if to shade herself from the sight. “Any excuse, I swear. Well, I guess we just have to wait now. Oh yeah! Um…you made that kind of squat sandcastle, didn’t you?”

“Sand bungalow,” Russell corrected.

“Oh, is it? Well, it got a little squashed…” To her credit, she looked ashamed. “I was moving the barbecue so I could start it up on more stable ground and I sort of stepped on the roof. Sorry!” She laughed nervously. Nervousness didn’t suit her at all, Russell thought. He shrugged, and moved his feet idly so the sand squelched some more.

“That’s alright.”

“Oh, good! I’ll try not to destroy any more of your houses.” They were both looking out at the sea now, since Tabasa had begun to pull the floatie back while Kantera didn’t do much of anything. Then, as if something had occurred to her, Gardenia began to take out her ponytail and said, “Better yet, let’s make one together next time! I’ll show you how to get multiple storeys.”

Russell looked over at her. He hadn’t yet recovered from the hot spell from before: his skin felt sticky with sweat, flushed with heat. He hoped it wasn’t too obvious. Gardenia was the type of person who’d remark on it if you blushed in front of her.

“I’d like that,” he eventually said, and turned back to watch Tabasa’s struggles. Now they were closer, it became evident that Kantera really was just lying back and enjoying being towed. Russell added, “If you wouldn’t mind.”

“Mind?” She turned to him, a disbelieving smile lighting up her face. “Geez, Russell, why would I mind? I’d love to do something with you for fun! I love spending time with you!”

Russell nodded, but slowly. It was as if the sand had blown through his ears with her words, scraping the inside of his skull raw, and even though he knew his nose wasn’t blocked and he wasn’t winded, he was finding it hard to breathe. She didn’t seem to notice: Tabasa was now close enough to the shore that she could put the binoculars down and run into the water to help him, chattering joyfully about what a big, strong knight he was. He snapped something dignified and helped an entirely unrepentant Kantera out of the floatie. The book was, after all, nowhere to be seen.

“Well, I certainly hope you all enjoyed the spectacle I made of myself,” Kantera said once they were back with the others. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I should go and change.”

“Did you really not bring a change of clothes with you?” Cody asked, taking a cup of tea Mireille had just poured from one of the myriad thermoses.

“Of course not. I didn’t imagine I would be getting soaked in seawater, you understand.”

“You’re at the _beach_!”

“That I am,” he agreed, and gestured for Tabasa to join him on the path back to the village.

Cody frowned for a moment before apparently registering Tabasa’s inclusion, and said, “Oh. Oh, be subtler, would you? Gross.”

“Yeah, Kantera,” Yumi said, with an only-slightly embarrassed Mireille sitting between her legs and being hugged just shy of innocently. “Be subtler.”

Kantera shot them both a look, and then he and Tabasa were over the ridge of dune and out of sight.

“Well,” Gardenia said in the ensuing silence. “It’s getting late so I’m going to start up the barbecue.”

There were murmurs of approval. Everyone seemed drowsy now, in various states of relaxation. Russell didn’t know what to do. Black spots danced in the corners of his eyes, like horseflies and mosquitoes that dash away before you can see them properly, leaving you only with phantom itches on your skin. But he was being silly. He walked forwards, back to the camp, and began to look around, but he found himself swaying where he stood. That didn’t strike him as promising. He walked over to the drinks pile and picked up a water bottle.

“Russell…” Mireille, her hair still being stroked, looked over at him. “Sorry for, um, saying so, but you don’t look so good… Are you feeling okay?”

He looked at her blankly.

“She’s right, y’know,” Yumi put in. “Your face is red as anything, and your eyes are looking glassy. You feeling okay, bud?”

Russell nodded, but everyone (Saxon excluded, since he was still asleep) was looking at him now. All eyes on him, worried and affectionate, looking out for him, for his health, concerned by the slightest thing that might be wrong.

_Ah_ , went something inside him, and the black spots began to warp in his eyes, like ink in oil.

“Oh, don’t crowd him!” Yumi bellowed, and Dogma, Cody and Gardenia backed off (Mireille didn’t have anywhere to back off to, so she just settled back against Yumi nervously). “Come on, have a lie-down. That’ll fix you right up.”

With that said, she pulled on the hem of his shirt and, obediently, he sat down in the shadow of one of the sunshades. Dogma offered his chair, but that was too much — far too much — so Russell only accepted a rolled-up blanket as a pillow. Then, to show willing, he lay down and shut his eyes.

The darkness helped. It was cool and calming, to start with, and he began to think he’d imagined his dizzy spell, began to wonder if he should get up and apologise for making a fuss. But before he could, the darkness seemed to wrap around him. It filled up his eyes and ears and nose with calm, with solitude, as if there was no one there with him at all. He could hear them, but it felt ephemeral, like the echoes of real voices. It was tiredness getting to him, he knew. It was fatigue. And, telling himself that, he fell asleep.

 

 

When Russell woke up, it was nearing sunset. The sun was low and thick in the sky, like an overcooked yolk, but even from the glimpses he caught of it in the corner of his eye, he thought it looked too orange. The clouds that had congregated above it faded from crimson to peach-pink, but they were more vibrant, more dazzling than any sunset he’d seen before.

He had the strangest feeling that he’d slept for days, or weeks. Naps were like that sometimes, he supposed. It was a wonder to him that people still took them.

As he was getting up, rubbing his eyes, he heard someone call his name. They did it more than once: the first time, it was like the hum of cicadas in his ears, but it began to break up into syllables, and then he turned to see Gardenia coming over to him. She held out a hand and helped him up.

“You slept for _ages_ , Russell!” she said, smiling. “Come and drink something: we’ve gone through most of the food already, but there’s plenty of water.”

Obediently, he took the cup of water she poured out for him, drank it under her watchful eye, and let her refill it. There didn’t seem to be anyone else in the camp. Even Saxon’s deck chair was empty.

“Where is everyone?” he asked.

“Huh? Oh, well, a couple went home, and a couple are over there trying to dig Tabasa out of the sand before the tide comes in.” She pointed down the beach, and the others were indeed there, though he hadn’t seen them a minute ago. Russell rubbed at his eyes, but it didn’t do much to clear them.

“You should go and say hi,” Gardenia said, grinning at him. “I can’t, because I’m a fugitive of justice and if they weren’t in such a hurry to dig him up, they’d be chasing me for burying him, but you should go over.”

“Shouldn’t you help?”

“Why? They’ll get him out in time. I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t know _that_. And look, they all like you, Russell. They’d love for you to go over and help.”

It didn’t make sense in the context of the conversation. It wasn’t something she should have said, but she had said it, and now she was smiling at him, waving, and walking away. Russell watched her go — watched the setting sun catch her white hair and stain it red — and then he turned to go to the others.

When he took the first step, a wave of dizziness hit him like an uppercut, but he weathered it, and kept walking. He held the cup tightly in his hand and tried to avoid the glare of sun coming from across the sea. The sand felt too sharp under his feet. But no: it wasn’t sharp, it just felt too much. His skin was too sensitive, his ears ringing with his own blood, and he felt that if he pushed himself too hard, he’d black out. He hadn’t been drinking enough. He forced himself to finish the water left in the cup.

Yumi and Dogma had almost finished digging up Tabasa by the time he made it over to them. The water was only just lapping at their feet, but there was still a communal sigh of relief when Yumi pulled him up and out of the impressive heap of sand Gardenia had managed to bury him with. It was only after that that they noticed Russell.

“You woke up, then?” Yumi said, still with an arm around Tabasa to steady him as he tried to wash the sand off. “You were right tuckered out, weren’t ya?”

Russell nodded, and came over for his customary hair ruffle, but to his surprise, she pulled him into a hug instead. He could feel the scrape of sand on her skin from when she’d held Tabasa; he could feel the warmth of her, and it would have bowled him over if she hadn’t kept him standing effortlessly. His skin was still burning when she let him go.

“You haven’t seen Gardenia anywhere, have you?” Dogma asked, and Russell turned to look at him. “I believe I shall be having some words with her.”

“I think she went home,” Russell said, more to avoid witnessing said ‘words’ than to save Gardenia from her just desserts.

“Did she?” He looked disappointed. “Well, I’ll see her tomorrow. The nerve of it.”

“It wasn’t really her fault,” Tabasa said, but even he didn’t seem to believe what he was saying. “I mean, I said she could, I just…didn’t know she wasn’t going to dig me back up.”

“Yeah, that’d make it her fault,” Yumi said helpfully. “She’s got an eye for details, though. D’you see the…the whatsits, turrets she added around your feet? Nice architectural detail right there.”

“Regardless of her skill in design, I don’t think she should be burying people in sand,” Dogma said primly.

Crouching down by the remains of the sand heap, Tabasa said, “Oh, I don’t know. This is quite good. If it hadn’t been for the dying part, I wouldn’t have minded being buried in this.”

As he said this, the sun began to disappear. What had been a fierce orange flare started to flicker, fail, and fade, and for a moment they found themselves washed in shadow, before torches burst into life back at the camp.

“We should go back,” Dogma suggested, and there was general noise of assent.

There was no one to greet them when they got there. It didn’t look like anyone was around, but the torches were well and truly lit, and Russell couldn’t say for sure if they’d been there when he’d woken up or not. He didn’t remember. He turned around to see if the others saw anything strange in it, but they didn’t appear to notice anything awry. Tabasa seemed to have gone somewhere else. There was only the three of them.

“Probably time to call it a night,” Yumi said, stretching. Dogma nodded, but he wasn’t looking at her: he was looking up at one of the torches, hugging his arms to his chest. There was something haunted in his expression.

Russell — caught up in watching him — jumped when he felt something touch his shoulder, but it was only Yumi. He looked at her questioningly; in the corner of his eyes, he saw the fire of one torch seem to rise up and curve into a mouth chattering with laughter, but he glanced back and it was normal again.

“Have a fun day, bud?”

He nodded. The plastic cup in his hand was dented now: it stuck into his palm, slick with sweat.

“Good. It’s been a rough first week, hasn’t it? Glad you could have a little fun here with us all. Now, I don’t mind if wandering around is what you like to do, but just remember that you can always ask us for help, yeah? We’re here for you, bud.”

His cheeks were burning. No — not just his cheeks, but his whole body, everything burning up and constricting as if his flesh were shrinking from the heat of the torches. He could understand why Dogma looked at it like it would reach out and eat him. It was too bright: from all sides, the light seared his eyes, his hair, his skin, his blood, and (only to escape it, only that) he closed his eyes and smiled.

When he opened his eyes again, Yumi and Dogma were gone. Dread that had already been stirring in the pit of Russell’s stomach like molten lead finally solidified into certainty.

Before he could even think to look around, he heard the crunch of sand from behind him, and — dropping the cup — whirled around to see Kantera standing serenely, just outside the ring of torches that circled the camp. He smiled at Russell.

“Would you like to go for a walk?”

With nothing else to do, he nodded.

The beach was deserted. There were no lights anywhere, but the torchlight seemed to follow them. Even a hundred metres away, Russell could still see his hands, could still feel the heat on his back. No matter how far he walked into the inviting dark, he couldn’t escape it.

“We worry about you,” Kantera said, apropos of nothing. Russell felt the words like rocks tied to his feet, dragging him down. “We certainly don’t mind how reticent you are — that’s just your nature — but there have been so many…concerning things as of late. We worry.”

Stop it.

“We only want you to be happy, you see.” So calm: he was so calm, smiling at the air in front of him, the firelight glinting off his horns, his earring, and they were too far away now for that to be possible, but Russell could still feel its heat on his back. Crawling over him, smothering him.

“You matter to us, Russell.”

He looked to Kantera, but Kantera didn’t turn around. Wetting his lips, he asked, “Where did everyone go?”

“Go?” He smiled, closing his eyes. Their footsteps were scraping through the sand as if they were walking through gravel. Too loud, but Russell could hear every word he said. “But they haven’t gone anywhere, Russell. They’ve always been right here. None of us have gone anywhere.”

“It felt like people were…disappearing.”

“Did it? Well.” He opened his eyes, looking up, and in the space of a single blink, he was Yumi, grinning down at Russell. “Not much we can do about that, then, is there, bud?”

Her smile softened, and it was like she was a buffering video, because the edges of her (still highlighted in that hateful, hateful light) quivered, and then she was Mireille, as if she always had been. “Oh, Russell,” she said, reaching out to stroke his face, but he leapt back and felt only static. “We, um…we really love you, you know?”

“Stop it,” he said, shaking his head and backing away.

Blood began to trickle down her head, and he could see — and hear — the side of her skull caving in slowly, but still she smiled. The bones of her face cracked, her smile a perverse imitation now, and then the image of her began to jump, to clip, and there was Dogma instead. He smiled too: sadly, and Russell began to heave as he caught the scent of burning flesh. Bending over, he covered his nose and mouth with his hands, but it crept in, choking him. He felt Dogma’s hand stroking his hair. “We would share all we have with you, Russell.”

“Stop saying that!” he cried, his voice hoarse. “I don’t want you to say that! Go back to normal!”

“But this is normal, isn’t it?” said Tabasa, now ruffling his hair. Russell looked up, but Tabasa’s smile was twisted, exaggerated well past the point where it should have hurt him. He laughed, and it was the cackle of monkeys. “It’s just us,” he said, his voice jumping through octaves. “It’s all of us, together, loving you.”

“Stop it!”

“Why?” And it was all of them at once, now. The thing in front of him clipped through bodies, through body parts, and their voices were as one. “This is a happy dream, Russell. This is what will make you happy.”

“This isn’t what I wanted!” he yelled, holding his arms close to his chest, feeling the burn of fiery heat all around him. “I didn’t mind dying here, I don’t mind that, but go back! I want to die here with everyone acting like normal! That’s what this is supposed to be! This wasn’t supposed to happen!”

So many smiles, boring into him. And then it wasn’t Yumi, or Dogma, or Tabasa, or Kantera, or Gardenia, or Cody, or Mireille, or anyone, but a ghostly shape with too many eyes that he’d seen before. It advanced upon him: before he could move, it reached out to cover his eyes, and it all faded away.

Everything went cold.

When he could open his eyes again, there was no heat, no buzzing laughter in his ears. Breathing heavily, swaying on his feet, he looked at himself.

“Oh, Russell,” the Informant said. “Oh dear.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

Russell looks out of place in the twisting, perverted remains of the Nameless Village. He’s real, after all. You can tell: even with a perfect copy, you can always tell which is the real thing.

The Informant knows that all too well. And surely now — now, after everything — Russell knows it too. He can make his face as blank as he likes, he can turn away from the Informant and begin to walk into the woods, he can refuse to speak to him, but he knows. It’s merely a matter of getting him to admit it.

“I told you this would happen,” the Informant says, because it’s his blessed fate to always speak first. “This shouldn’t be a surprise. Hadn’t you braced yourself for it?”

Russell’s back shows no reaction, but the slopes of earth on each side of the forest path he walks begin to melt, to squirm like mounds of worms. So he hadn’t, then. The Informant follows him, carefully placing his feet in every footprint Russell leaves in the damp earth. The same size, shape, weight. The same.

“You know none of them were real,” he says. “They were all completely fabricated. AI born from your own mind, your ideas of what they’d do and how they’d act. You know that. I know you know that.”

“They were real to me.”

Ah, he says it. The truth is like the acrid sharpness of unripe berries, like lemon juice stinging them both in their raw, raw wounds. Those, at least, are different. God forbid they ever feel the same way about this; god forbid they ever see eye to eye. The Informant breathes in, catching the scent of burning rubber in the air.

So they were real to him.

“What’s that worth?” he asks, but he knows the answer. He knows all of this: everything Russell feels is open to him, as natural for him to know as his own emotions, little as he has any right to those. He’s only here to make Russell see them, and accept them, and for that, the Informant pities himself. You might as well indulge in self-pity, when nobody else cares about you.

Russell doesn’t answer, which is an answer in itself. The fact that they were real to him is, after all, worth nothing. Less than nothing, even. It’s a maggot worming into open wounds, a tapeworm curling up in Russell’s stomach and taking all the nutrition he needs, leaving only taste. That is Happy Dream. Because whether those people were real to him or not, they weren’t actually real. Everything they did was, at its root, to serve him.

“You still did what you did,” the Informant says pleasantly, dropping prompt after prompt in the hopes that one will eventually make Russell speak for himself, and finally admit that he knows and accepts all this.

Acceptance, that’s the key. But the Informant can see formless shapes rising out of the trees and earth in the corners of his eyes. It’s always the corners, for things like this: they don’t like you looking at them straight-on. He hurries after Russell, ignoring how the ground they’re walking on changed — just for a millisecond — from earth to a soft covering of pine needles.

“You killed them,” he says, and his voice echoes everywhere. “You did, and as you came to care for them, as you came to feel guilt, you began to wish they would forgive you. That they would love you. And then…” he spreads his arms, making sure Russell stays firmly in the middle (as if he could reach out and take him, as if…), and he feels the very ground shake with some horrendous chattering laughter. He lets his arms fall. “…this,” he says finally, his voice twisted with distaste.

“They might have,” Russell says, turning down a forest path that has warped beyond recognisability. It’s only because this world is so simple that they know where to go.

“They might have,” the Informant allows. “But you don’t know. You just tried to convince yourself they would.”

“I didn’t.” He’s firm about that, at least. His voice — quiet at the best of times, and this is not ‘best’, by any stretch of the imagination — is barely audible. “I knew they weren’t the real ones. But I wanted to feel what it was like, to be…”

_Loved_.

There are cracks in the sky now. Everything is breaking apart in the Informant’s hands, because even when Russell acknowledges, even when he accepts, he only uses that acknowledgement and acceptance as bricks to bury himself alive. There’s nothing the Informant can do, not when this was never his choice to make.

But he tries anyway. He has to.

“I could have helped, you know,” he says, not letting the sadness drift into his voice. “I was supposed to help. I was supposed to show you how to move forwards.”

“I didn’t want your help. I don’t now.”

The Informant’s step fails, just as the shaking, wailing trees peel back like old scabs to reveal the start of the beach. He stays still for one, two, three of Russell’s footsteps, and then he walks again, but ignores the footprints. They’re cracking up now anyway.

He could have expected this. Russell has never made a secret of how little he wants the Informant around. He was created for this — for exactly this — and at every turn he has been pushed away, used for basic information about dungeons and monsters and where the others are, but never for what he’s really for.

_If you_ _’re going to leave me, at least smile once for me, before I break._

He’s not wanted. There’s no place for him here. Russell has moved onto the beach, onto the sand that glitters and dances like sickly-green fireflies, and he isn’t looking back. He’s searching for the remnants of a happy afternoon with the people he’s learnt to love — too much, because now he won’t leave them. It’s very simple. He learnt to love, but he never learnt to love himself. The Informant is the part of him that does that. Oh, and how. But there’s no self-love left in the boy himself now, only the need for more and more while the parasitic dream sucks everything from him. So he won’t leave, and he won’t listen to the Informant, and he doesn’t even want him around, despite how the Informant yearns only to be treasured by him above all others.

Russell steps into the water, letting the treacle-thick blackness seep over his feet. He stands there for some time, and the Informant watches him. The world clips, and fails, and tries to rebuild itself with parts that don’t fit.

They are here, two halves of a whole, and Russell won’t let them fit together either.

And the Informant is tired. He’s unwanted, and Russell doesn’t need him, because Russell needs real people. He was a fool to think he could survive with phantoms alone. So the Informant isn’t enough. He, like everything else, will be laid to rest by Russell’s dream, without a say in the matter.

The least he can do, as a last gesture of goodwill, is give Russell what he always wanted.

So the Informant turns around and begins to walk away. He leaves Russell standing in the water, staring out over the horizon filled with a dying sun, the only living person in a graveyard of good intentions.

Not that those mean much after the fact.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This entire chapter is roughly inspired by the lyrics to [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rjl0imFssZQ&feature=youtu.be). 
> 
> (I don't know why I switched person and tense either, but let's call it a conscious stylistic choice)

**Author's Note:**

> Credit where credit's due: I brainstormed most of the fun activities with [witchoftreats](http://archiveofourown.org/users/WitchOfTreats/pseuds/WitchOfTreats) and he came up with the 'Kantera floats off into the sea' with [this cool dude right here](http://archiveofourown.org/users/glueskin/pseuds/glueskin). I'm not good at coming up with comedic stuff on my own (sweats).


End file.
